


Things That Go Bump

by charlottechill



Category: The Magnificent Seven
Genre: Holiday, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-09
Updated: 2009-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Halloween night, the seven take refuge from a fierce, oncoming storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Go Bump

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a debt of gratitude to BMP and Gwen for reading the (really) rough draft and telling me straight-up what needed to change. Thanks also to Anne, Dail, and Tonny for their insightful feedback that definitely improved the story.

"No way we're gonna beat that storm," Buck muttered, not for the first time.

That had gotten pretty damned obvious in the last half-hour, after they'd had to veer off from the familiar trail and take a road that moved inland but paralleled—they hoped—the swollen river. The idea of stopping out here made Chris Larabee one angry man, because every time Buck warned that they should take cover, Vin twitched and mumbled something about having a bad feeling for this part of the wild.

"How the hell could that ford go so bad so fast?" Chris finally asked, glancing around to his men. He'd happily take even one of JD's cockamamie theories at this point.

Vin stretched in the saddle. "Guess the rains hit hard west first, up in them hills."

"Those the same rains that are gonna wash us off this road 'fore long, Vin?" Buck asked, but softly. He wasn't challenging so much as urging, and Chris ducked his head to hide a grin; Buck, for all his brass, had learned plenty from his mama about how to handle men.

Vin's face tightened, and Chris let him and Buck make the decision. He was one to forge ahead before he'd let weather chase him off but Buck didn't scare easy, and if he was worried then it was probably time to worry. They weren't going to get home tonight no matter what they did, and after a week on the road, if Chris couldn't curl up against Buck somewhere private then he didn't care much where they all slept.

"All Hallows," Ezra murmured just loud enough, and saying just little enough, to rankle.

"Say what you're gonna say, Ezra," Chris growled.

Ezra just looked at him, but it was Josiah who spoke up after a quick glance at Ezra's profile. "He said All Hallows, Chris. Not a fit night to travel the roads even without this storm, Ezra? I didn't take you for a superstitious man."

"I'm not; there's no money in it. I just like to know where I'm going, and I don't want to sleep in the mud," he said a little sullenly.

"The mud grimier on the witches' day, Ez?" Chris prodded, trying to read the man. He couldn't tell if Ezra was just being persnickety or if he had something useful to say, and he wasn't in the mood for either.

Chris stared at the forbidding clouds up ahead that hung so black and fat and low. It looked like they were growing bigger and darker as he watched, and he decided maybe Buck was right. Buck had grown up in Missouri, where the twisters and bad storms were said to really blow before they tended to trickle out in Chris' own Indiana. Storms off the Great Lakes, which he'd seen with his own eyes, were violent enough but nothing like the tales Buck told, not even like the parts of those tales Chris actually believed. He glanced over at Buck, who replied all with his eyes: worry, no little fear, and a silent demand for action. Chris tended to ignore that demand as often as he obeyed it, but it looked like Buck would get his way today.

"Vin, find us a place to hole up," he ordered.

"Can't say much about what's in front of us," Vin said quietly, "but we passed a growed-up track not too far back that looked like it led somewhere."

"Where?"

Vin barely moved, and cast his own look Chris's way. "It was an old mine road, I'd say. Leastwise the ruts were too deep and wide for a homestead. Whatever's at the end of it, plenty of folks traveled to get there and out again."

"I've never heard of a mine in these parts," Ezra said.

Chris ignored him as he watched lightning flicker inside the storm, turning black to gray--green before the shock of white left an impression on his eyes. "Let's turn back and see if we can't get there before the bottom drops out of them clouds." They turned their horses on the road and headed back the way they'd come, Vin leading the way and Chris just off Vin's horse's flank.

The shelter Vin found them was a good one. Abandoned buildings had all but caved in, and what smelting equipment remained looked rusted clean through—far worse for wear than Chris would've expected for the few years it could have been left here. A natural seam in the rock face showed them a big cavern, open to the elements all along its wide mouth but roofed by a flat granite shelf twenty or so feet up. The mine head started at the back of the cavern, and it looked like they'd hit a mineral stope less than six feet into the dig; the tunnel had been widened to the full width of the mineral cache itself, maybe 30 feet across and plenty high for men and horses. Chris struck a match and ore shimmered, thick green veins of copper, blue malachite, and quartz that bounced light like mirrors. The chamber was echoingly large, but smaller than the cavern itself and many feet inside the natural cavern. No way would the rain and wind reach them in here.

"This'll do," he said and everyone fanned out unspoken to his regular job for camping. JD tended the horses and removed their tack, quartering off a space for them using saddles and spare tack to make a rough fence that the animals recognized. Buck scouted their hidey-hole for hidden obstacles or dangers, going so far as to light a stub of candle and walk many careful steps down the shaft until Chris couldn't see the flickering flame at all. He picked a spot for a fire just at the head of the mine and well back from the natural cave entrance, where there was plenty of updraft to carry the smoke out but many yards between it and the cave entrance where winds and rain that might blow in, then carried everyone's saddlebags over. Josiah and Nathan gathered wood while Vin looked to rustle up some dinner, and Ezra sat on his ass and pulled out two pint bottles, his regular exchange for avoiding honest labor. Chris felt the corners of his mouth quirk as he considered it; good whiskey in the middle of nowhere was worth a hell of a lot more to this bunch than a little extra firewood, and the crafty Ezra knew it.

Not many minutes later a fire blazed and brightened the hollowed out room, reflecting off quartz and mineral remains so much that it afforded a cheerful brightness to the place. Vin had managed to find them two wild turkeys that would feed them tonight with something left over for breakfast and was cleaning them just outside the mouth of the cave. The meat would supplement their hardtack well.

They passed around the first bottle and emptied it quick enough before Chris went to stand for a bit at the edge of the rock shelf, staring out at the storm. It had hesitated for a time, long enough that Chris almost regretted stopping, but even as he watched now the rain chased across the land in thick shining sheets. It had raced down a far hill and just crested a nearer one, so heavy it hid all the land behind, turning the hills to ash and mist in its wake and booming like distant thunder. It would be here in minutes.

"Pretty, ain't it?" Buck said from just behind him.

Chris looked over his shoulder, then back out at the raging weather. "Not the first word I'd use," he admitted.

"Me neither, if I was stuck in it. But hell, we're dry, got in plenty of wood for a night and maybe another day. Nothin' can get to us in here except maybe other things don't want to be in that rain. And them," Buck added with a satisfied sound, "we c'n eat."

Chris almost smiled before he glanced over his shoulder at his men and the wide mouth of the stope. "You sure there's no mountain lion sleeping down that hole?" He wasn't kidding, really, as a good place for a man to lie low would be even better for a wild thing.

Buck shook his head. "Clean as a whistle. No crap, no carcasses, no nothing. Felt a little lonely down there, in fact, and—" he hesitated, but continued on, false-hearty, "the mineshaft looked to end just a few hundred feet down anyhow. No place for anything to hide."

Chris raised his eyebrows. "And?"

Buck's teeth flashed in an honest grin. "And nothin'. Never knew I didn't like tight spaces, is all."

Chris laughed at that. "All the cupboards you've had to hide in, that's hard to believe."

Buck took the ribbing good-naturedly. "There's old framing timbers, so we could probably pry out more firewood if we needed to. Things get too boring up here maybe you and me can wander off and gather some up."

"Uh huh," he said, dry, unsurprised when Buck waggled his eyebrows at him. He had Buck's number all right, and if Buck wanted to take him for a stroll down that mine, gathering wood was the last thing he'd be planning. To signal that he appreciated the idea and to half-apologize that with the boys around, he would never go for it, Chris stepped a half a pace back until his shoulder brushed Buck's arm.

They stood in companionable silence for a time, listening to the onrushing storm and the noisy conversation of their friends settling in.

"Ever seen something like that before, Buck?" The new voice almost startled Chris, and he wondered if the wind was so high that he wasn't hearing folks approach or if this quiet cavern did something to eat the noise rather than echo it around. Vin stood abreast of Buck, staring out like Chris had been.

"Nope," Buck said honestly. "We got us a good place here to hole up though. Thanks, Vin."

Vin shook his head. "I ain't so sure."

Chris picked up on his unease and turned away from Buck, putting a polite few inches between them. "What's the matter?"

Vin pursed his lips and frowned a little before he glanced back at their fire in the cavern. "Can't rightly say, Chris. The People don't live out this way, even though a big chunk of this is likely reservation land. River close by, some nice grazing land this high up, you'd think they'd make a go of it wouldn't you? And how come the miners just left this place? Seems like I could pick up enough off the ground to buy me a new horse."

Chris wasn't sure he was exaggerating. "Is Ezra collecting right now?"

Vin sighed. "You know it. I told him to be careful...."

"Vin?" Chris frowned. Vin wasn't one to sound worried if there wasn't a reason.

"Just a feelin'."

"A feeling stronger than that storm coming?"

"I s'pose not," Vin said, but softly, like he wasn't sure he believed it.

The rain was louder now, a pounding of hooves racing across the earth. The horses inside lifted their feet nervously, feeling that wet stampede vibrate up from the ground. "Let's go inside." There was no sense staring out at Mother Nature. She obviously had herself some plans that man wasn't privy to, and Chris wasn't going to intrude.

Whatever mining Ezra had been doing, he was finished now and cozied up to the fire, holding his ever-present pack of cards and shuffling aimlessly. His horse's blanket peeked out from beneath the fine twill of his trousers, and Chris knew that someone's overcoat would become the felt and Ezra would be trying to sucker them into a game before they bedded down.

The storm reached them then, rain and hail so hard it pounded through the cavern, so loud they had to raise their voices to be heard over it, so heavy that the world ended in a wall of water right outside their granite overhang. Chris had the eerie sense that nothing could penetrate it, that if he walked into that wall of water he'd fall off the edge of the world.

Everyone's tension was obvious in its own way. JD paced back to the horses a dozen times to check their bits or scratch them, Josiah and Nathan put their backs to a wall and stared out into the darkness that had followed the rain, and Buck stuck close to him but didn't have anything to say—not as uncommon as most who knew Buck would think, but tonight his silence felt heavy, anxious. Even Vin looked twitchy where he turned the meat and jerked every time lightning flashed.

Chris turned back toward the storm, watching the wind blow rain sideways and puddles form a few feet inside the cave mouth before they overflowed and ran back out into the storm. The noise of it rattled his brain but he just stood there quiet beside Buck until Vin called, "Supper's on," loud enough to carry above the din. Chris nodded Buck's way, waited for the little nod back, and they away from the fury of the storm and settled near the fire.

They all ate in silence for a time before the date inspired the conversation.

"I've got a story," JD announced, working to let his voice be heard above the storm, and proceeded to tell the one about the farmer who cut off a troll's toe with his hoe. By the time he got to the point where he was limping around on a supposed stump groaning, "Where's my toe? Where's my toe!" Ezra had blanched. Chris, Buck and Vin had dropped their heads so as not to let the young man see them laughing, and Josiah and Nathan were utterly stone faced.

JD jumped at Buck then, who promptly grabbed him around the legs and dragged him to the floor, so the evil troll "argh!" turned into a little mouse squeak.

Chris lost control then and laughed until his eyes watered.

"Heck, that was a good story!" JD claimed after he wormed loose from Buck and started beating the dirt off his pants.

"Hell yes it was," Buck heartily agreed, "the first hundred times I heard it."

JD, flustered, started to mouth off, and Chris put a stop to it before it could start. "Save your energy, JD. It's a good story." He looked hard at Buck, silently asking him not to wind the kid up right now. Buck subsided, a smile still resting contentedly on his face. They had all adjusted now, not quite yelling as the din pounded on and on. No flash flood this, it had some heft to it; the rain hadn't lessened at all, and when lightning flashed, thunder pealed right at its heels, casting eerie shadows and dull trumpets all the way inside. Chris fancied he'd hear the echoes all the way down to the end of that mineshaft.

"I reckon you got something better," JD dared, and Chris wondered why the little banty rooster put himself through shit like this. For all his talents, storytelling wasn't one of them, whereas Buck could make falling off his horse because he was bent too far over trying to kiss a woman sound like high drama. And JD knew it.

"You know I do."

"Don't start, Buck," Chris ordered quietly, then he shared a friendly glance with the rest of the men. "I don't reckon now's the time to hear about your last five women, not out here with no softer company around than this dirt."

Buck chuckled, that knowing, self-indulgent little sound that only Chris understood; most of Buck's mystery women these days involved a quiet ride out to Chris's shack, and no women at all.

"I reckon that would be awful unkind," Buck agreed and leaned back on his elbows, stretching his long legs that bit closer to the fire. "Josiah? How about you?"

Josiah seemed to ponder it a moment, and Chris stared into the fire and listened to the storm. As far as he could tell, it hadn't abated one whit. Hell, he couldn't even tell if it was daylight or dark outside. His gut said dusk should have fallen by now, but he just couldn't tell through all that fury.

"Back in Baton Rouge, down Louisiana way, there lived a man name of Squire James. Now he married into his money, found himself the sweet only daughter of a landowner--good land, too. He courted her until neither she nor her daddy could refuse him, and she married him that next spring."

Chris tilted his head. He didn't think he'd heard this one, and it looked to be interesting.

The tale wound kindly through the years, telling of the conscientious way she worked to make her marriage a lasting one, and how the Squire didn't take much notice. Not a horrible man, not a cruel one, he was nonetheless newly rich and absorbed with his holdings, and uninterested in notions of love or romance. Mrs. James began to wither in the absence of both.

Josiah went quiet for a moment, long enough that Chris wondered if that was the point and if so, what was interesting about that? He glanced around the campfire, at JD sitting right next to the heat, back straight and eyes absorbing the tale. Buck sat just beyond him, one long leg bent to make a rest for his forearm; Vin had eased a couple of feet further into the shadows, resting back on his elbows and parking his boots right next to Ezra's bent knee while Nathan sat next to Josiah and frowned like he'd heard it before. The ever-present whssp of Ezra's cards, folded into and over each other with one lax hand, was the only sound that reached past the rain.

"They say a man can be struck as true by love's arrows as the gentler sex," Josiah finally went on, "and old Squire James never believed it--that is, until he met the sweet flower who was visiting relatives in the mansion down the road. First time he saw her, he felt it, that kind of love where it don't sneak up on you and you don't ease into it, it's just there, shaking your whole body right to your soul. She had soft auburn hair pulled to one side, draped down over a creamy shoulder, and her pretty pink mouth and blue eyes, and her smile on him felt like the sun."

"Tell us more about the woman, Josiah," Buck said, entertained.

Chris grinned in spite of himself and shot a look Buck's way, but Buck wasn't even looking at him.

Josiah didn't pay Buck any mind. "The problem with that kind of love is that it makes the heart pound and grabs up all of a man's attention, so he thinks that it'll always be that way. Because he forgets that after being around a person for awhile, that wild passion calms and he can catch his breath and settle in."

Chris skittered a long look at Buck. He couldn't say for sure that they had ever been struck that way—he certainly didn't recall such a thing. Maybe it was different between young men, whose first thoughts were never about romance or the future. Years ago, their hearts had pounded as much for their rough passion as for their drinking and dreaming and railing at the world, as young men without cares were wont to do. It seemed they'd fit together though, when he had needed somebody to lead and Buck had wanted somebody to follow.

It had been different all the way around back then, easy to leave, easy to set aside for either or both of them. He wouldn't have said, if pressed with the question, that they had cared much about each other at all, but men were stupid about their affections, reluctant to feel them and even more reluctant to admit to them, and Buck and Chris weren't exceptions. It _hadn't_ been like that arrow Josiah talked about, that arrow that had struck him when he'd seen Sarah. But here he and Buck were today, time and battle-tested, their mettle growing finer and stronger with every forge they found themselves fighting in. They fit together now like hand in glove, gun and holster, more the content and comfortable he'd felt with his wife after years of living and loving with her than he'd ever want to acknowledge. Had Cupid's aim been wrong, way back when? Or had they just been too wild, too stubborn and stupid and naturally inclined to know they'd been hit?

Josiah cleared his throat, drawing Chris's eyes away from Buck and back toward him. "So when you can breathe again, that's settling in. That's trust. That's knowing if you've really got something worth holding on to."

Vin nodded soberly. Chris wondered who she might've been, or if Vin's problem was that after he could breathe again he found that there wasn't enough there to fight for. Vin sure had made some bad choices about women since Chris had met him. He looked again to Buck, furtive and quick, and caught him looking back. They had something worth holding on to, and he smiled a little, letting it show.

"Now the squire," Josiah went on, "he'd never had the chance for that with his wife because he didn't love her in the first place. But he felt it for this woman, and he took to riding out to meet her for trysts in an old barn near the edge of his property. But Mrs. James ain't blind. She knows that spring in her husband's step isn't because of her, and she tries to follow him, find out what's what. On the night of a full moon, with the countryside painted all white and silver, she sees him meet a woman on horseback, sees their horses nuzzle close. And she feels in herself a powerful anger, knowing her husband has betrayed her not just with this gal but from the very first. Mrs. James slinks along the road, she watches them dismount and lead their horses into the hay barn, and she knows what she's going to do. It ain't holy, but she don't care no more.

"She goes back to the house and rummages in the tool shed until she finds the jug of kerosene and some matches."

Chris realized suddenly where this story was going to go, and he didn't think he had the stomach for it. He glanced around the campfire once more and found Buck looking right at him, a little frown of worry marring his face. Chris shook his head. This wasn't that fire. This was just some stupid story told to scare teenaged boys away from trying to go too far with their neighbors' daughters.

Josiah droned on, oblivious to Chris's agitation. "When she gets close to the barn she peeps in through a gap in the boards to make sure they're still in there. They're in there all right, laid back on a quilt and entwined together in a lover's embrace. Mrs. James takes that big bottle of kerosene and tiptoes around the barn, pouring it right along the baseboards. She takes up her matches, strikes one right across the door--" Josiah mimed actions to go along with the words, and Chris shuddered. It was just a story. "--and she stares at that flame for a second." Josiah stared at his empty fingers, held aloft as if they held a lighted match, and Chris watched, sickened and mesmerized. "She tosses that match onto the kerosene-soaked boards." He flicked his fingers and Chris flinched then cursed himself for letting it get to him. It was just a damned story.

"All that barn had in it was hay, the lovers, and their horses, and it went up like a bonfire. Soon as it started, she cut the string on the door latch so they couldn't open it from inside, and she sat back down to watch the blaze. Soon enough the horses were kicking and neighing, and she heard two voices screaming."

That was it. Chris jerked upright and climbed to his feet. "I'm gonna take a walk."

"Chris?" Vin called quietly.

"Chris?" JD echoed. When Chris moved his gaze away from Vin he realized that they were all staring at him, all but Buck, who sat quietly with his eyes on the flickering campfire, giving him his privacy to do with as he would.

He waved his hand to ward off the worry. "I'll be back. Just gonna go see what's down in this mine."

"Don't get lost." Buck said it like he meant it, even though Buck himself had told him the shaft dead-ended not far in.

"I won't," he assured them all. With that he grabbed one of the torches they'd fashioned, lit it off the main fire, and tried not to run as he retreated from his memories, his lover, and his friends.

Buck twisted around to watch Chris go, trying to decide if he'd appreciate company. He wouldn't want to talk about it, and maybe some time alone would suit him better--as long as he didn't trip on something and break his leg. Chris hungered for time with himself, for quiet, so much so that sometimes they could be at odds with each other even when they were the only two people in the room. The tension that tightened those broad shoulders didn't bespeak of loving in a dark corner, either...

He turned back to the fire and found himself the center of attention.

"He'll be all right," he said, to convince them as much as himself. He didn't know if Chris would ever be truly all right, even after they caught and killed Ella Gaines. That wouldn't bring Sarah and Adam back. "Go on, Josiah, what happens next?"

Josiah looked uncomfortable, and Buck chuckled a little to lighten the mood. "It's just a story, fellas. There's plenty of 'em I don't want to listen to, either. Go ahead, Josiah. It's a good one." And it was, though it seemed like the women in the tale were getting the short end of the stick.

After a second Josiah cleared his throat. When he continued, the telling lacked some of its luster. "Well, I guess the important part is that them two lovers died in that barn, and their horses too, and Mrs. James she just rode back to her big old house and her lonely bed, and she went to sleep. Woke up the next morning and took the news of the fire without blinking an eye. She even wore black at the funerals, and gave her condolences to the neighbors and asked them to pass on a kind word to the dead gal's parents." Josiah paused again and glanced around at each of them."

Buck found himself a little repulsed and a little awed by the character. The lady had nerve, that was for sure—not that he agreed with what she'd done, but he understood how hard it was on a woman who didn't have any love in her life. Ladies didn't have the same power men had in this world; she couldn't just call the other woman out and settle things fair and square, couldn't divorce her husband without shaming her papa and herself.

"And I suppose that would be the end of the story if other forces didn't work on this earth. Because a few nights after her husband's funeral, there came the sound of screaming horses on the road, running full-out and right through her front yard. The chambermaid, she looked outside and saw what she said were huge horses, ash-gray with red eyes and bleeding mouths, and these two charred creatures astride them that looked like Hell had spat them out--and that was the last thing she ever saw. She was struck blind just for looking.

"About that time, Mrs. James woke screaming. Nightmare, the upstairs maid thought, but whatever her husband's ghosts visited her with, it drove her into madness. Her face had aged twenty years since she'd laid her head down that evening, and her hair had gone white just like a crone's. She babbled words no one could understand, and she never recovered. To this day, folks in those parts hear those demon horses screaming and galloping by, and no one dares to look at them 'cause of what happened to the chambermaid and Mrs. James. Even now, if folks down that way hear horses screaming on a dark night, they lock their doors, bar their windows and gather their loved ones close.

"But then," Josiah finished slowly, "there's no protection from such things. She unleashed an evil on those parts that they say still haunts those lands today."

Buck bit down on a disgusted sound. Turned out the women in that story had gotten the bad end of that deal after all, every one of them.

JD, caught up in the image of the story, shivered. "That's... that'll make you want to get to where you're goin' before nightfall," he said.

Buck met Vins' eyes and grinned at JD's susceptibility to such tales. For all that JD was a man, he still wore his youth more than he wanted to.

"An entertaining, if moral, tale," Ezra observed soberly. "Baton Rouge, you say?" he asked, as if testing the chosen facts of the story for future reference.

Josiah smiled. "That's how I heard it."

"I heard it the same," Nathan said, and Buck glanced between the two friends, wondering if Nathan said that because it was true, or to give the story more heft. Either way, that tale deserved a good word.

"Now that's one good ghost story, Josiah," he said. "Wonder what it'll take to put that poor woman to rest?"

Josiah shrugged. "Who knows what it takes to soothe a lost soul?"

Ezra cast a careful glance around to his friends, observing who had been moved by the story and who hadn't. Josiah seemed to believe it well enough, but then Josiah had great faith in the supernatural. Nathan and JD seemed to as well, while Vin and Buck just as clearly did not.

His gaze wandered toward the mineshaft as he wondered himself what it took to soothe a troubled soul. What had started off as a relatively cozy retreat from foul weather and a heavy weight in the wind had changed, as if he could sense barometric pressure dropping. The very air had become thick and electric and wet, and cold wind gusted now and again into the cave mouth, violent and sharp, as if warning them to stay put. Buck had swiveled a little to look after Chris as well, and it was nothing at all to read the cautious worry on the man's face. Ezra wondered how long it would be before the others deduced what he himself had already: that Chris and Buck were more than friends, were in fact sinners of the sort that was never mentioned in polite society.

He couldn't say that the look on Buck's face now appeared anything more than brotherly, but Ezra's entire profession lay in knowing how to read men, and Chris and Buck had compromised themselves. Buck was by far the more obvious, his tells so consistent: the way he'd turn when Chris approached, or especially the way he _wouldn't_; the way he'd tell tales of female conquest like a carnival barker, building whole cloth from threads and inference, unwitting repetition and flat-out lies, then ease out of town, heading out to the south but almost always returning from the west, the direction of Chris's home. Not that Buck's love of women had waned—he still eyed wives and chatted up saloon girls, flirting and laughing loud enough to shake the rafters so frequently that Ezra had to wonder how Chris tolerated it. There was no question that Chris did, however. His eyes were more likely to smile than scowl when he observed Buck's flirtations these days, and an affectionate curve would just shade his mouth.

Chris was far more subtle than Buck—of course, most people were—but Ezra had watched Chris on the street and in the saloon, his eyes casually tracking Buck. Chris Larabee always knew where Buck was, and where he wasn't, and that perhaps was the biggest tell of all.

"What?" Buck said, frowning.

He realized then that he was staring, and that Buck had stiffened under his scrutiny. It wasn't like Ezra to forget his own poker face when people had their attention on him, but he profoundly disliked this cave and their situation, and had been warring with his own unease for many hours now.

He tilted his head toward the mineshaft then lifted his eyebrows in silent question; it was painfully easy to distract Buck Wilmington.

Buck glanced too, as if he couldn't help himself, but in the end just shook his head. "How about you, Ez?" he said instead. "You must've heard some doozies around the poker tables."

He blinked. Ghost stories on an eerie Halloween night with a storm raging out in the dark might possibly be better than sitting silently in the company of five friends distracted by the absence of the sixth. "A doozie, you say?"

Buck snorted and, Ezra noted, tried valiantly to stifle a grin; he failed. "Sure, Ez." Buck glanced JD's way, grinning more broadly. "Something real scary."

He looked toward the impenetrable wall of rain that had them trapped in this hole, watched as a lightning bolt diffused the dark mass into sharp daggers of fat, heavy raindrops before the unrelieved darker gray returned. The thunder crashed hard and loud enough that several of the horses moved nervously and whuffed into grain sacks; Vin had gone so far as to tie a bandana around Peso's bridle straps, blinding the gelding to keep it from getting out of hand. Harsh wind whipped the rain at an angle across the cave mouth, emphasizing the violence outside and lending an unearthly feel to the gale. It could be days before they'd be able to find a way across the river, and they could be stuck out here in the hinterland indefinitely. _That_ was scary, as far as Ezra was concerned.

"I once played poker with a gentleman from Pennsylvania," he began, "and the story he told me fits our circumstances exceedingly well. As it happens this event took place in a mine—"

"No cave-ins," Josiah said mildly. "Bad luck to talk about cave-ins when you're in one."

Bad luck? Ezra thought that only he had let the date and their circumstances rattle him. "No Josiah, there were no cave-ins. Though the way he told the story to me, he'd have preferred something with such closure. To his knowledge, this tale has never come to an end, you see," and he lowered his voice as much as he could with that storm raging outside, watching as Buck and JD leaned closer to hear him over the wind, as JD's bright eyes betrayed his willingness to believe. "It may still happen to this day." Nathan and Josiah's placid faces betrayed their skepticism, as did the tiny crinkles of amusement at the corners of Vin's eyes. Buck just looked patient, willing to be distracted for a spell, but Ezra would wager high stakes that Buck wouldn't remain distracted for long.

"Jason and I sat the card tables in Kansas City some years back. We had been gaming for several days, he and I and what few others imagined themselves players. On Halloween night, because the weather looked threatening and the citizens who peopled the saloons seemed on edge, I suggested that we all gamble for stories." He laughed a little in memory; his mother had been appalled.

"You still do that," Nathan commented, and Ezra nodded his agreement. They had all seen him gambling when only the local color had been available to him, acquaintances that lived in the area, dirt poor and ignorant. Ezra would entertain them and himself by gambling for gossip and tidbits of tales that he hoarded almost as eagerly as his money. Information was power too, after all. "Yes, Nathan. It seems kinder than stripping them of their meager funds."

"It is," Buck said, and there was no missing the compliment there. Of course, Buck was as free with them as he was with his dalliances. Still, it was nice to hear.

Vin leaned forward and the fire caught his profile, making it all angles and brown shadows. "What have you heard 'bout these parts?"

Ezra had been surprised enough to hear tension in Josiah's voice, had in fact tried to blame it on the man's ill-chosen story elements, but Ezra had never seen Vin shaken in the wild. "All of it myth and mystery," he assured with a careless flourish. "Though I'll admit the lies about this region are thick on the ground, hauntings and magic and frights to try men's souls with very little useful detail. But surely you don't believe such things, Vin?"

Vin leaned back out of the firelight, frowning and defensive. "Course I don't."

After a carefully timed pause Ezra frowned and offered Vin his most serious and apologetic look. "Now that I think of it, the setting for Jason's story is eerily parallel to this place we're hiding in now." He cast a glance around, hoping he looked appropriately nervous.

Buck chuckled, clearly catching on. "Well ain't that a coincidence?" he laughed. "Go on, Ez."

"Obviously that mine was far older than this one, as they've been digging in Pennsylvania for more than a hundred years. Wait—Vin, didn't you say that equipment outside seemed too dilapidated for this particular region?"

"I might've, Ez," Vin said, and Ezra heard the smile in his voice, sharp and amused as Vin played along and let Ezra draw everyone in to the tale's supposed truth. "If I knew what 'dilapidated' meant."

"Worn out," JD said, though Ezra could tell from the tone of his voice that Vin was just ribbing him. Vin listened to everyone, and learned the definitions of words from their context as quickly and easily as others learned from reading and education and books.

"Then yeah," Vin said, "I said that."

"Well, Vin," Ezra said mildy, "you're the expert in these matters." He nodded thoughtfully. "Jason was a sincere narrator. The details may sound unbelievable, but trust me when I say that I found his story more credible than I care to admit." Details he'd thought long forgotten rushed in, positively fraudulent Ezra was certain, but sounding so simple and uncannily real.

"There's many a strange thing on this earth that can't be explained," Josiah said. "Go on, Ezra."

Ezra nodded. "Jason worked for a well-established mining interest in Marathon, Pennsylvania. His father, his uncles, three cousins, a son-in-law and his close friend of many years, Jonathan, had all moved with him from mines in the east. They all lived within a few houses of each other, and it was all quite pastoral until the night he lost his friend and family, and abandoned mining altogether.

"There had been signs all along," Ezra said, remembering details the gentleman had spilled so haltingly. "Men reported strange disturbances: getting lost along well-known and well-established routes, claiming they had found shafts that no one had blasted and by all rights should not have existed, sighting relatives long-dead." He smiled a little. "They were the kinds of stories a miner might tell on a cold night to entertain his friends."

Josiah's voice rumbled on a low laugh. "That so?"

"So Jason said," Ezra replied. "A nor'easter worse than any he had ever witnessed was blowing that night, lightning crashing so hard and fast it penetrated the downpour. Rain and wind pounded his rooftop so hard that it frightened his wife and children." He glanced toward the mouth of the cave, unnerved suddenly by how much this storm behaved like the one Jason had described. "He lamented to his wife that the miners, protected underground, were far more content than those persons forced to suffer the weather, but not much later he received word from a bedraggled runner that his friend Jonathan had gone missing in the mine. Jason and his son-in-law, near-blinded by the heavy rain, felt their way along the hedge between his home and an uncle's, and with covered lanterns and luck they slipped and slid their way down the street toward the mine, gathering men along the way to aid in the search.

"Jason had ten men in all when they entered the mine and headed for the area where Jonathan had been blasting that day, but soon enough walked into a fresh shaft that the engineer swore hadn't been there two days before. Jason heard voices, whispers of friends long-dead." In that very moment, Ezra's imagination played tricks on him and the soft lilt of a woman's laughter breezed by his ears. He jerked and glanced around, but as the others had obviously heard nothing, he chastised himself for having too vivid an imagination, and tried to ignore the way his skin crawled. He'd been similarly unnerved when Jason told him the story, and the retelling had the same effect.

He sincerely hoped that Chris was having better luck escaping his own ghosts down there in the dark.

* * *

Chris walked fast, looking to get far enough away that he wouldn't have to hear the obvious ending of Josiah's tale: lovers in flames, trapped in a building and burned alive… the thought still sickened him, and could never come without memory on its heels: burnt and blackened bodies, the pale green of Adam's belt and a tan patch of his shorts that had survived from where Sarah had curled over him to protect him from the flames. Uselessly. Helplessly.

For years he had wondered why hadn't she just gotten out of the house, why she hadn't found the time to get out when every room had a window and both kitchen and parlor had a door. Their place wasn't that big, she could have just broken out a window, tossed Adam out at the very least—and there his thoughts always stuttered to a halt, because he didn't like the part of himself that might have been grateful if only Adam had lived. He'd gotten too many answers to questions that had plagued him when he'd discovered Ella Gaines' madness, but she had spawned more questions for his imagination to run wild with.

Sarah and Adam been trapped in there, with men outside likely firing on the house whenever they tried to escape. Had she been shot as well as burned? He knew Sarah, knew she wouldn't have given up easily or let her son be lost without doing everything she could. What had they said to her, done to her to keep her from just throwing herself out a window and bullets be damned, as the smoke choked her and the fire burned hotter? Her killers must have barred the doors from the outside, like the crazy woman in Josiah's tale. Fowler and his thugs could have done anything, touched her even, sure that they would kill her and leave no witness to their crimes. They could have—he forced himself away from those thoughts because he didn't have whiskey or Buck to distract him from his too-vivid imagination. He had no evidence of anything except that she and Adam had died from smoke and fire. It seemed to him that firestarters satisfied their lusts with the blaze alone, and Sarah had likely woken only after the smoke was choking out the good air, and rolled forward to protect Adam from the heat of the flames. They had probably suffocated before she could do anything more, and died from that smoke long before the fire ate the meat off their bones. Not knowing for sure meant nothing to Chris; he _had_ to believe that, or go insane. Buck was good at reminding him how hurtful thinking the worst could be. Buck was even better about remembering the very best of things, and helping Chris to remember too.

Not that he could forget, and not that he'd ever be able to prove anything else anyway, not in this life. And he didn't believe in any other.

Behind him, Josiah's voice had faded and finally disappeared while he'd tried to unwrap himself from harsh memory. He stopped still, long enough to listen to his breaths and breathe out hard until he no longer smelled the smoke off their campfire. He'd walked far enough that he couldn't even hear the rain anymore, which surprised him; he'd expected its echo, or at least the boom of thunder to follow him as deep as the shaft went.

The silence and the darkness just beyond the torchlight shrouded him, shrouded his memories too: he could hear only the whush of his torch burning, the sound of his own breaths, and the muted thud of his boots on the rock. If he cocked his head just right he imagined he could hear Sarah's voice telling him to take care, almost like it was real, whispers in his mind that seemed to echo up from deeper inside the tunnel. He couldn't trust those memories, wasn't sure he could claim to recognize his wife's voice anymore.

A piece of him—a big piece—wished Buck would come along and keep him company.

* * *

"Is it drafty in here, or is it just me?" Ezra asked, drawing his coat tighter about his neck.

"It's always just you, Ez," Buck goaded, then stood up and stretched, his eyes wandering toward the entrance to the shaft. "I'm gonna go tell Chris it's safe to come out now," he said, sounding so cocksure that Ezra believed he thought he was being funny. The fact that Chris would likely smack him if he heard that tone and those words out of Buck actually what made Ezra smile.

"Best of luck," he said, and waited a moment for Buck to depart before he looked around. Now that he was in the middle of it, Ezra found he really, really didn't want to repeat this tale. "Vin, would you mind terribly feeding the fire a bit?" Ezra asked, pointing absently toward the pile of gathered sticks and branches others had collected.

"Your legs broke?" Vin demanded amiably.

"They are otherwise engaged," Ezra replied smartly, flexing his toes in his boots and trying to work some warmth into them. Invariably, Vin was happy to perform honest labor when Ezra was not, and soon enough Vin stood to fetch more wood with only the slightest grumbling. "Cards, anyone?" he asked, and fanned the deck.

"Go ahead 'n finish your story, Ezra," Nathan said, clearly interested and not nearly so affected as Ezra.

Ezra sighed. He'd brought it on himself, after all. "The shaft in which they stood seemed virgin, scattered with riches no miner would have passed by. Several of his fellows couldn't help but pause to examine the minerals and express their awe at the sight, and Jason admitted with some shame that he too had paused by all that glittered while his father, his son-in-law and his uncle Henry scouted on ahead. Not long after, Jason said he heard Jonathan's voice as if the man were standing right behind his shoulder, and he urged his fellow searchers onward. Not much further into the unknown shaft, he came upon a sight that even the speaking of made him tremble. As Jason told me the story, he kept glancing over his shoulder, and I believe he felt true fear as he described what they found in that cave." He hesitated before adding, "I know I did."

* * *

Buck took a candle with him and lit it while he could still see from the campfire. The air down here was still and cool, with barely enough breeze to make the candle flame flicker; it would last longer than a torch would. Less light, but it wasn't like he needed much to walk a little ways, corner Chris, take his temperature and be sure his mood had cooled down, and then maybe distract him in one of Buck's favorite ways. They'd been on the road a while this time, surrounded by the boys and making no time at all for each other. Maybe Chris would appreciate a little coddling.

Buck knew that after the way this day had turned out, he wouldn't mind some, himself.

The candle didn't light the way nearly as well as he wished. The shaft seemed longer and darker than before, and Buck couldn't help but grin at his own nerves; Ezra sure knew how to tell a tale. Dark stories and dark nights made the world look different to him, always had, and the only things that changed that were the people he passed those nights with—and the most important person had wandered off down into this hole.

Maybe he should have said something to Josiah, something to make him end his tale and let Chris stay, but that was never an easy thing to judge; Chris railed against tenderness as often as he sought it, and even after all these years Buck couldn't say for sure when the man wanted which the most.

He'd been walking careful and slow for a while now—too long, he thought, remembering Ezra's stupid campfire story. Without thinking much about it he started whistling an old drinking song to fill the dark around his candle.

Chris couldn't be much farther ahead.

* * *

"What'd he see?" JD asked, breathless.

Ezra resisted the urge to look over his own shoulder. "It looked like a woman long-dead, the flesh and skin stretched taut across her bones like some dried-out animal's carcass. She stood in a pool of slithering pitch."

JD frowned. "Huh?"

Ezra just nodded. "She had caught Jonathan in a close embrace, almost like a lover, and long talons held him tight even as he struggled to get away. Uncle Henry had jumped in to try and prize the creature off him, but even while Jason watched, Henry's own body began to wither from the feet up, turning black and gray and looking for all the world like jagged cuts of stone. Jason's father had also jumped into the fray, his hands on Jonathan's shoulders—and the father was equally snared.

"His cousins who had rushed on ahead stood frozen in the black mire that wormed its way across the floor."

"Ezra," JD complained, "even I know they don't let gals into mines; it's bad luck."

Ezra braved a look at each of his friends, watched firelight throw shadows across familiar faces. "Jonathan was terribly sincere, and I assure you his poker face was non-existent; he had lost heavily to me in the preceding days, and as he told his tale his skin went progressively paler until he was as white as clean laundry. Whatever happened down there, Jason believed he was telling the truth."

"That doesn't mean you did." JD so obviously wanted to get his thrill of terror but equally obviously didn't want to appear too gullible in front of his older, more mature friends.

"I did," Ezra admitted. "More than I wanted to, trust me." He looked to catch Vin's eye, but Vin was staring toward the mouth of the abandoned mine, a pensive look on his face. "Vin? What is it?"

Vin didn't turn.

* * *

What had Buck said? A few hundred feet? Chris was sure he'd been walking longer than that, and further. He slowed, glancing around at something more than the toes of his boots on rock worn smooth and specters from his own memory; the shaft had widened, its ceiling higher than Chris thought a mine shaft should be, and his torchlight landed on darkly colored veins of ore and bounced off chunks of quartz the size of his arm, lighting up the space like candles in a cathedral. Chris wasn't completely ignorant about metallurgy. Folks should have been digging in this place for years to come.

Obviously Buck had been dead wrong when he'd said there wasn't much down here, and that the shaft ended a short ways in. If Chris hadn't had his eyes on his boots and his mind on the past, he might have noticed the turn or rock outcropping or whatever it was that had made Buck think the shaft dead-ended. He lifted the torch a little higher, saw where the shaft narrowed many yards ahead and plunged further into the mountain. He must be standing in another stope then, another geode taller than a building and wider than a city street and filled with the very riches men went underground for. He reached the shaft on the other side and hesitated; his torch still looked fresh enough, but surely Josiah would have finished his story by now, and whoever started telling the next tale would avoid one with fire and death in it. He should go back and see—

"Whatcha doin'?"

He startled so badly he almost dropped the torch, cursing under his breath. Buck had snuck up on him, which was practically unheard of between the heavy tread of boots or Buck's whistling or hell, Buck just calling Chris's name as he searched.

"What's it look like?" he grumbled.

"Looks like you're hidin'," Buck said reasonably, and grinned. "Looks like I scared you, too."

"Shit." He wasn't hiding, not exactly, and Buck sure as hell hadn't scared him. He just knew when he wanted to avoid something, so he did. "I'm all right," he finally ventured.

"Josiah's finished his story, Chris. Long enough ago that I figured it was time to come and check up on you. Ezra's the one jawin' now." Buck glanced about. "Damn, this sure is pretty, ain't it?"

Chris looked around at the very metals he'd been examining before Buck surprised him. "Guess so."

"Aww come on, Chris, look!" Buck stepped up to a nearby wall and ran his fingertips along a seam, following the blocky chunks of a yellow-white that ran diagonally until it was out of his reach. "Damn, too bad quartz ain't good for nothin' but lookin' at, ain't it?"

"If you say so," Chris said.

Buck touched a golden lump, then turned and cast him an impish smile. "Think we ought to bring Ezra down here? Let him have a go at mining?"

"Hell no!" Chris said. "We'd never get him back out."

"Guess not. Wonder what else is down here?" Buck took a slow step into the shaft. "Could be something interesting."

"It's a hole in the ground, Buck," Chris said, a queasy feeling in his gut telling him to turn back even though he'd been wondering the same thing a minute ago.

"Yeah, but it's a clean hole, and quiet, and there's a storm blowing up there and nothing to do but listen to the boys ramble. Let's go on a little deeper, see what else we find."

Chris glanced at his torch. The cloth was tightly wrapped and knotted, the creosote still burning merrily. He had time. "This shaft is a hell of a lot longer than a hundred yards," he said.

"Looks like. Weird, huh?" Buck shrugged off the mystery. "Maybe it turned and I didn't notice. Come on."

Buck's earlier report of no animals or scat still looked to be true; Chris hadn't even seen any cobwebs, and the air down here smelled clean and fresh. There wasn't any harm in looking. He followed Buck deeper into the mine.

* * *

"Jason described an evil stench when they came upon the creature, sulfur and rotting meat that made his stomach pitch and roll. Fear kept him from the blackness that spread over the floor even though several relatives had already stepped forward into it. He stood transfixed, a mute witness to the horror as his friend began to gasp for air. The creature laughed, an unholy sound. His father, gripping Jonathan's shoulder tightly, began to cry, and Jason could only watch as family members and friends alike were consumed by whatever this thing was, their bodies changing as if the very stone of the mountain climbed up their limbs to claim them."

Ezra paused again, examining his friends' varying stages of disbelief, noting again that Vin still hadn't turned his head away from the mine entrance.

* * *

Everywhere Chris swung the torch the walls sparkled, so much so and so often that he finally had to say something out loud. "Wonder why they gave this up?" he asked.

"You'd think they'd have honeycombed this whole mountain to get this stuff out," Buck agreed. "Look here." He stepped again to the wall. Using first his fingernail and finally drawing his hunting knife, he pried a soft, mottled bit of rock from the earth and held it up. "You think this is real gold?"

Chris frowned and bent closer as Buck rolled it back and forth in his palm. As big as the first knuckle of Buck's pinkie, it shone prettily enough, and its color, pale yellow, made him want to say maybe. "Couldn't say."

Buck tipped his hand and rolled the stone until he caught it between thumb and forefinger then held it out. "You have it," he said.

"Nah. Keep it." If it was pyrite he'd rather Buck look the fool than himself, and if it wasn't? It didn't matter.

"Take it," Buck insisted, and nudged shoulder with the back of his hand.

"I said no!"

"You are the most ornery, cantankerous bastard I have ever met," Buck muttered. "You won't take one little present from me?"

"I take shit from you," he said mildly. "Ain't that enough?"

"It's a present, Chris."

"A rock you just dug out of a wall with your knife, you don't even know what it is? I don't know what to say," he said, grinning as he brushed off the ridiculous gesture. Buck's face went still and disconcertingly hard. For a bare second he looked angry, and not in that happy violent way he did when facing off a lawbreaker or spoiling for a fight. Chris blinked and lifted the torch a bit, but the look—if it had been there at all—was gone. Buck gazed back placid and quiet and slightly annoyed as he dropped the ore to the ground.

Chris was surprised he didn't save it to offer some bar maid, but all he did was bump Buck's shoulder with his as he passed by. "Maybe you c'n give me somethin' I actually want sometime," he grinned, offering a little conciliation. Not that he ought to encourage the man, but the smiles that flashed across Buck's face when Chris said things like that never failed to satisfy some simple part of him. "Come on." They could risk a few more minutes, and he wanted Buck to know that he valued his company now. He wouldn't have, right when he'd left the fire, but Buck knew when to leave him alone and when to follow, and that mattered to Chris more than he'd ever be able to say. The shaft followed a dark greenish seam for a ways before it petered out, leaving only quartz and rough granite.

"Ought to turn back," he said when long minutes had only shown them more of the same. They couldn't afford much more of this distraction, not with the rest of the boys back behind them and the torch burning low.

"Sure you ain't getting a little scared of the dark? I could help you out a little with that."

Chris smirked. He supposed it had only been a matter of time. "You itchy, Buck?"

"Ever known me not to be?"

The man had a point. Still, "Don't mean you need to be scratched all day."

He felt the pressure of a hand low and welcome on his back before Buck answered, "It's been plenty of days. I was worried about you back there, you know."

"Yeah." The trouble was, he _did_ know. "Just ghosts," he offered, trying to decide if they'd be silent now that Buck stood by him, or if memory would rise up to haunt him again as it sometimes did. "Think they're still walking around in my head a little," he finally said.

The hand followed when Chris moved to retreat from it, and Buck's breath landed hot on his neck. Buck's other hand eased past the heavy leather of his gun belt and down, hot over his hip, right in front of his holster. "Let me chase 'em off for ya."

"Ain't no need," he said, and there really wasn't. They weren't kids anymore, and a few days going without wasn't the hardship Buck liked to pretend. With each passing year he found he preferred soft beds and warm quilts, a fire in the stove and slow care, telling Buck things that Chris would likely never say with words.

"Take what I'm offering." The words were soft, and warm with Buck's breath, and Chris leaned back a little, his conviction wavering as it too-often did.

There wasn't much reason to say no, but something inside him told him he should, that now wasn't the time and that here definitely wasn't the place. Buck's big hands dragged across his waist and hip while Chris held the torch well enough away that neither of them would get singed. "Not here," he said, then added the promise, "We'll find the time."

"We've got the time now," Buck pushed, and pressed his body closer. A prominent erection pressed against his hip and Chris almost laughed, a piece of him willing to succumb, to open their trousers and handle each other's manhoods, pull and stroke until they spilled onto this cold dark earth. But the cabin beckoned, warm fire and soft quilts, the freedom to be naked and close and unafraid of discovery. He resisted even as Buck bent to rub his jaw against Chris's neck, beard growth and soft mustache tickling, promising. Practice only made them better at this as childish lust gave way to a deeper passion, and at home Chris could get lost in the kisses Buck offered so easily, until they were all he could think about, all he could feel or taste or hear.

The barest whisper of sound tickled at his brain, a muted echo of a song he knew well, bawdy and bright and being whistled by somebody who was piss-poor at it somewhere up the mine shaft. It must be JD, coming to look after Buck who had come to look after him.

"Somebody's comin'," he muttered, turning his head away.

He took a step back and glanced up the shaft. "You want JD to stumble in on us and give himself a heart attack?" he asked, uncomfortable. "We need to get back." Buck's arms still held him, loose but firm, Chris's free arm around Buck's waist naturally, because it belonged there.

"Not anymore," Buck said.

"What?" Chris brought the torch up a little to chase shadows and light across Buck's face. At the same time, a voice called down the shaft: "Chris?"

A too-familiar voice. Buck's voice. But Buck was standing right here with him, looking at him with a glint in his eye and the mischievous smile of a guilty schoolboy caught putting the frog in the teacher's desk drawer. "What the…"

"Glad we got a ways along before he showed up." The arms around him tightened, holding him in place like steel bands around a whiskey barrel, no give at all. Chris jerked but couldn't get himself loose, and a chill like snowmelt ran through him. His skin crawled and gooseflesh rose where those arms trapped him.

"Chris!" Closer now, and much as Chris liked to believe that nothing shocked him these days and little scared him, right now he was all of both because that was Buck's voice calling out, and that was Buck's piss-poor whistling getting so close now, probably not ten yards away, and whatever stood before him, holding him so firmly… wasn't Buck. Wasn't Buck at all.

"I reckon you gave in enough before he came down," whatever held him said.

"Gave in to what?"

"Me," it said, still smiling sly and satisfied. He licked at his lips and rubbed his cock against Chris's hip. "You have any idea how hard it is to get you to take something of real value from me? How many times I've tried?"

Chris had to work to make enough spit to move his tongue, to call out. "Buck! Get the hell out of here!"

The face that swam before his eyes looked so familiar, so comfortable and so goddamned amused that it made Chris's heart pound. He felt like he'd felt when he saw his wife's locket in Ella Gaines' twisted shrine and he wanted loose _now_, but slamming the toe of his boot into this thing was exactly like kicking the rock wall. Fighting did something, though, because for a moment the familiar face slipped, changed to something that bore no resemblance to human but that he recognized all the same. "Ella?" he barely breathed.

* * *

"Jonathan was the only one whose body went black by slow degrees. The mire climbed up him, covering every inch of him until only his mouth remained, gaping on a silent scream. Then Jonathan's body began to soften and change, melting, shrinking in on itself. The force of his father's grip tore the shoulders right off the molten body, and seconds later his father's body shattered and fell to the floor, no longer distinguishable from the rock around it."

"That's hideous," JD said, looking every bit as disgusted as he sounded.

"I couldn't agree with you more. And yet I saw with my own eyes a piece of bone and fabric that Jason claimed was all that remained of his father."

"He carried it _around_ with him?"

Ezra smiled tightly. "He had plans to bury it in California, where his father said he wished to live one day."

"Still," JD argued, looking ill. "You just don't do that to people!"

* * *

"Chris?" Buck called again, nearer now because the stupid son of a bitch couldn't listen to him and do as he was told for all the tea in China, and this thing, this thing would hurt Buck. Chris knew that as sure as he knew he was drawing his last breaths.

"I said get out of here!" he yelled, while the thing that held him smiled and white teeth flashed in the torchlight and fire reflected red in the black pupils of its eyes.

Like Buck would listen. Like Chris would have, if the shoe was on the other foot. The sound of Buck's big Peacemaker being fired cracked loud and sharp and he knew Buck would be on them in seconds.

"Chris!" Buck's voice was almost upon them, no echo down here to speak of, and the light from Chris's torch caught and sparked red in the points of this thing's eyes.

"How did you get down here?" he asked the thing, because he had to do something and Buck was about to walk in on what Chris knew now was his death and Chris Larabee refused to be the cause of that. Not like this. He'd already lost one family, and he wasn't going to lose another.

"I go where I like, Chris," it said, the gruesome smile broadening, hungrier and still so eerily familiar that it turned Chris's guts to stone. He understood somehow, sensed somehow what this thing wanted—utter possession, his soul some kind of plaything. What Ella had wanted… what Ella had been.

"You're not gonna kill him," Chris grated.

The arms tightened painfully but the smile never faltered. "I won't let anyone come between us."

It turned its head, still smiling, and then Buck was right there in the edge of a circle of light that was far too wide to be thrown by the torch Chris held, the torch that should have been dead long ago because it was the only one down here. This thing had come upon him in the dark without a sound and without light to guide it. And Buck stood not ten feet away, the real Buck, the one of flesh and bone and heart too much bigger than his brain to listen and save himself and Chris's soul cried already for the loss of this man.

Buck's body in deep shadow, his face and shoulders stood out like an apparition floating in the dark, and how the hell had Chris not realized he could see better than he ought to down here, that this thing that had looked like Buck and held him like death had done something to him? He could only turn his head, looking a little over his shoulder to watch as Buck's face went from angry to sad to sorrowful as he saw whatever this thing made itself out to be for him.

"Sarah?" Buck, his Buck, the real one, breathed.

"Shit no! It's not her!" he shouted, hearing his own voice cut loud through the dark silence. Chris jerked hard but he might as well not have moved for all the good it did him. "Shoot it!"

The creature laughed, its form changing further still, skin going dark and dry and dead like a desiccated corpse's. "He won't shoot me, Chris. And even if he does, it won't matter. Bullets can't hurt me. He can't hurt me."

Buck didn't look like he'd heard the words it said and Chris shuddered, thinking this was some nightmare he'd be damned glad to wake up from but knowing it wasn't. He stared at the evil of it head-on and said, "Whatever you want from me, you don't need him to get it. You've taken enough." Its eyes shimmered and changed, the visions slipping and sliding from face to face dragged from memories of people he'd known. It _was_ Sarah for a moment, charred and blackened with soot, and then it was Ella-but-not and Chris prayed that Buck would see that face, the face of the only woman he might shoot on sight without thinking or worrying or caring about her sex. "Shoot it, Buck," he grated. "For God's sake, shoot it!"

He heard the click of a hammer being pulled back but didn't look, wasn't even sure Buck could sight the thing without having to aim through his own body, but the gunfire reported and shattered the still tableau. The thing pushed Chris sideways, nearly lifting him off the ground as his leaden feet stumbled and dragged on the rock floor. It lunged toward Buck, and Chris heard the Peacemaker fire again and again until the hammer clicked on empty chambers and Buck said, "Oh my God. Oh my God."

When he heard Buck's weapon fire echo up the mineshaft, Ezra leapt up with the rest of them, grabbed up a light and ran. Buck had said there was nothing down there, but obviously there was—what, a bear, mountain lion? He wished for his rifle, felt damned defenseless with only his Richards and whatever the rest of the men hadn't discarded when they'd settled by the fire. Vin still had his sawed-off Winchester, the best they had among them, damn it.

They hadn't reached Buck yet when the weapon fired again, five times in quick succession. He stumbled along and fell hard to one knee, felt the rush of air as Josiah and Nathan ran past him and the harsh bite of fingers in his upper arm. He looked up into Vin's shadowed face and let Vin drag him back up to his feet. JD cursed low and muttered, "Come on," and Ezra followed them both.

A glow from ahead cast faint light in the tunnel around them, and with the light came a sickening smell of meat carcasses and rotten eggs. The smell rose up so fast that it stung Ezra's nose and made his eyes water. When he remembered describing a smell exactly like this not five minutes ago, bile churned in his gut.

* * *

Buck dropped his empty Peacemaker and rushed forward. All Chris could think to do was shout "No!" but Buck ignored him and pressed up against his back, tucking himself as tight and close to Chris as he could manage and forcing his hands around Chris's middle, between Chris and this creature—and Buck's touch here, now, flayed Chris's soul open, exposing them each to the other. Emotion swirled between them, and Buck knew. _Knew_ that Chris loved him more than any touch or unspoken words by themselves could have ever said. Chris could feel Buck's joy like his own, inside his body down deep, even with this thing clutching at him. Afraid of having this again, afraid of losing it, he had pushed Buck away for years, ignoring this deep-in-his-gut understanding that Buck was a part of him, the part that made him whole.

He felt Buck's surprise that Chris felt for him so deeply, and knew he shouldn't have kept it secret. He'd never lied to Sarah about how he felt, but God damn it he'd lied to himself, and to Buck.

He'd closed his eyes somehow, and now he forced them open to stare at the creature before him, its face again uncannily like Buck's, but Buck's eyes had never been so cold. Hot with fury or sparking with passion, crinkling with laughter or damp with tears, Buck was as rich with life as this creature was rife with death. With Buck pressed against him, inside his heart and his head, Chris felt comforted to know he wouldn't die with a lie still on his soul. They would die; he didn't doubt that after Buck's bullets had just disappeared into this creature. But they'd die together, and stripped bare of harsh words and silences and everything else he'd hidden behind. This thing wanted his soul, but his soul wasn't available; Buck had it now.

He tilted his head back as much as he could and Buck's beard stubble scratched against the side of his neck, so familiar. This thing had lost already, even if he and Buck had lost too.

The walls around them glowed red-orange, reflections of a nonexistent fire.

Ezra drew up before he ran into JD, who had stopped cold in front of Vin at a spot just before the tunnel widened. Chris stood in a widened area of the shaft perhaps ten feet ahead, and Ezra couldn't comprehend how what he was seeing could possibly be real. The thing before them looked like the creature Jason Maloney had described, all muscle, sinew and gray skin pulled taut over unrecognizable bones. Words hadn't conveyed the true horror of it, the smell, the _weight_ of an evil that compressed his chest and made it hard to breathe. Chris stood trapped right up against the thing, wrapped in vine-like arms as a gory black goo climbed slowly up his legs. Buck pressed against Chris, his chest to Chris's back just as Jason's father must have stood behind his long-time friend.

Josiah was only a few feet ahead, not near enough to reach out and touch Chris or Buck and hopefully smart enough not to try. "Mother of God, Ezra, is this your story?"

The only greater horror than what he was witnessing was the idea that he had somehow instigated it. "I didn't make this happen!" he protested, but he threw his torch to the floor where sure enough, a blackness oozed out in their direction. Josiah, JD, and Nathan had walked right onto it.

Vin saw it too and understood, jerking back two quick steps and stomping his feet. "Git back! All of y'all, git back away from it!"

JD yelped like he'd stumbled across a nest of rattlesnakes, but he didn't move. Ezra saw dark crud encrust the young man's boots. Josiah and Nathan were equally rooted where they stood.

"Vin," Chris said then, his voice tight and hard. "Get 'em out of here."

"It's too late," Ezra said, numb with shock. Josiah, Nathan, J.D., Buck and Chris were trapped where they stood, caught in the clutches of that thing like a cougar in a tar pit. His head felt like it would explode any minute, overfull of noise and fear. "It's too late…."

The inky sludge reached Chris's thighs now, and Ezra could see how it tried to slither between Chris and Buck, how while Chris's legs went black, Buck's were turning the grayish of the native rock of this mountain. It seemed just as Jason's story had said, that the rescuers would freeze in place and turn bit by bit into the earth and ore around them until they crumpled like slag to the floor, tiny remnants of bone and cloth the only human things left of them. Dust to dust… wherever this creature lurked, its surroundings were littered with the corpses of the dead.

"Chris," Buck said, and the sound seemed so loud in the creeping silence. "Chris, don't let go."

Ezra saw Chris's hands clutching at Buck, one tight around his forearm and the other braided with Buck's fingers. "I… won't," Chris grated, and there was no misinterpreting the defiance in that voice.

Suddenly they were all shouting over each other, conflicting orders that made no sense: _Stop fighting it! Loosen up, Buck, let go of him! Keep your mouth closed!_ as if they could _do_ anything.

"Ezra, finish the story," Josiah shouted, voice heavy with effort. "Finish it and make it end right!"

Beside Ezra, Vin proved himself the only one of them capable of real action. He shrugged out of his coat and knotted a sleeve. "JD, grab hold," Vin ordered, and pitched the coat forward so JD could snatch at the other end. As soon as it extended over the muck, a spark snapped from the floor and the hide coat sparked into flames like the flash powder carnival magicians used in their prestidigitation. The coat disappeared in a flurry of ash.

Vin turned to Ezra then and shook his shoulder. "Ezra, they ain't got much time. Finish the story, like Josiah said. Finish it and make it turn out right or she's gonna kill 'em all."

"She?" He jerked his eyes away from Chris and Buck and toward Vin, whose face glowed eerily red. "What do you see?"

Vin grimaced and looked uncertainly toward the creature. "It's Ella Gaines. Now where'd you leave off the story, Ezra?" Vin barked. "Three of 'em were dead, right? The friend gone all black and the daddy and the uncle fell apart? So we ain't there yet. Um, lemme…" Vin swallowed hard. "So it's different this time. Chris Larabee's a darned sight stronger than that man's friend was, and Chris can fight it off. He's gonna fight it off. We ain't lost yet, Ezra."

Vin's cumbersome words brought with them the understanding Ezra had been missing. "And we won't," Ezra affirmed. He pushed down his own panic and started talking, faster and smoother than he ever had in his life. His mother had often said he could talk the keys away from Saint Peter himself, and now was his chance to prove it. "The creature's sin was gluttony, not lust," he began, interrupting Vin's efforts as the story pieced itself together in his mind, both Jason's tale and Chris's own history. "Beautiful and seductive when disguised, it set its sights on certain men whose power drew it like the scent of corruption, powerful men like Jason's friend, and Chris Larabee. No one knows how many it consumed, but legend will tell soon enough of how it was sucked back down to hell on a Halloween night in 1873 while a storm…" he swallowed, "while _its_ storm raged overhead, driving its human prey toward its lairs like cowboys drive the herd toward the slaughterhouse."

Chris had always known that having a cheat on his side could be a valuable thing. Listening now to the honey-smooth cadence of Ezra Standish's voice, the convincing lilt and tone and timbre, he thought maybe he'd underestimated the man even so. A glimmer of hope ran through him, his or Buck's, he couldn't be sure.

"Evil envies strength," Ezra's soft voice carried, "and Chris Larabee was a man of great strength indeed, strong enough to earn the respect and loyalty of men who rarely chose to follow others. Charismatic enough to charm members of polite society and move among them, even with the secrets he held that no polite society would ever condone."

Buck's thoughts flowed under his, pride and a twisted amusement in Chris's sudden embarrassment. He was no hero, no better than the next man save for his fast draw or his fists, but Ezra's words and Buck's strident affection denied him his own opinion in the matter.

"To stand by a man without judging him, through hardships no one should face, that's Buck Wilmington's gift I suppose." Chris heard a pensive note in Ezra's voice, a wariness that warned him before the man continued, "It is a gift that Chris finally accepted most ardently and wholeheartedly after his last exchange with the evil that usurped Ella Gaines."

"Ezra…" he warned, less shocked than he should have been to realize that Ezra had found them out.

Ezra ignored him. "Chris refused to let Hell take anything else of value from him. It was his very particular affection for Buck that saved him and his friends that Halloween night."

Chris thought he understood what Ezra was doing, what Ezra thought he should reveal, but he didn't have to like it. Buck didn't either, wary of the danger to his own self but worried, always stupidly more worried about Chris. Chris felt something twist inside him, that Buck tried to protect him even against the condemnation of friends. _It's all right, it don't matter,_ he wanted to say, but couldn't bring himself to speak the words aloud.

He didn't have to. Buck's fingers tightened on his.

"Watch your mouth, Ezra, and get to the point," Vin hissed, and Chris nearly laughed out loud even in the midst of all this shit, at the annoyance in Buck that Vin and Ezra knew already when he'd been taking great pains to hide it. Buck's breath huffed against his neck, reserving a little of that annoyance for Chris too.

"Every good story lives in the details," Ezra snapped, sensing the story expand before him, understanding things for which he should have no knowledge. "In our details. In the way Chris brought you away from a life of hiding and distrust." He met Vin's eyes only briefly. "Another friend he helped save from an unjust hanging, and another from the suffering of unneeded penance." Josiah grunted his dissent but Ezra couldn't be bothered. He knew a great deal about every man here, and if he'd taken the time to ponder that he would have been astonished at the fond details he had collected over the last four years. "Me," Ezra said, aching, "he saved from my own avarice. And Buck—Buck saved _Chris_, from a cold and lonely future. Much as Chris resented that help," he added wryly.

A soft hissing sound filled the cavern and the very air around them grew thick. Ezra watched his friends as through a dense and rising fog.

There. Something was definitely different. Josiah sucked in a deep breath and tears that had seemed to hang on Buck's eyelashes fell. The light had grown so bright down here that Ezra could see the spot they made on Chris's black coat when they fell.

"Is it workin', Ez?" Vin whispered beside him.

"Yes," he said coolly. You never let your enemy see your doubt or sense your uncertainty. Never. He could have tried to convince Vin to leave with him before whatever that thing was aimed its venomous magic at them. He could have run himself and left Vin to do what he would. But he had chosen to remain down here with his friends, and therein lay their victory. The noise in his head was louder now, revealing itself as soft whispers, many voices guiding his tale.

"Perhaps it's truer to say they saved each other. No matter what their private turmoils—and there are many, as with most real families—each keeps showing up just when the other actually needs him, and that's no easy task." He watched Chris lean back infinitesimally into the bigger man's embrace in response to his words, and nodded to himself. Buck tilted his head, whether to press a kiss to the bared neck or to whisper some private thing or just to breathe in what scent of Chris's might remain, Ezra couldn't know. "Nor was it an easy task to admit what was between them, a tried and tested love that their physical union now expresses."

JD jerked and gasped, and Ezra couldn't know if it was from astonishment or pain. "Ezra?" JD breathed.

"Theirs is hardly the sin here in this fetid hole," Ezra said. "Keep your faith in your friends, JD; it has never been misplaced." The truth of the words struck Ezra as hard as he suspected they did JD. He had trusted, he had _learned_ to trust beside the men he fought for now.

"What it is to be someone's family, you abominated reject from Hell, is to know that their happiness is yours, and yours is theirs—that their struggles are yours and yours theirs… that you can trust them with all of yourself. You sacrifice long-held misconceptions and even your own principles for your family."

"Got some experience with that, Ezra?" Vin's tone sounded careful and wary, his eyes never stopping in their scan of the creature, of its edges and ripples that expanded and contracted like breathing.

"More than a little," Ezra agreed.

"'s good, Ezra. Family does that for each other. That's why family's so strong."

Ezra didn't know if Vin were practicing various potential last words or trying to influence events down here, but he couldn't disagree. "Yes, it is. And we have all given up things for each other, given things _to_ each other, while this creature only tricks and takes. Who knows how many times it tried to separate Chris from his family? All we can know, and all that the tales will recall, is that ultimately the creature failed."

His low laughter seemed out of place down here, but when he saw Chris's head turn he caught the glint of teeth from what was almost surely a smile. Ezra couldn't easily pinpoint the day Chris had settled in to what he had chosen with Buck, but over time Ezra's various hypotheses had given way to a truth he'd have sworn to in court—or perjured himself in court over, to protect them. He turned his eyes to the creature, to that thickest and darkest part of it that still held Chris in its grasp. "He has made his choice. You can't have him."

Nothing and no one moved, though the black ooze had reached as far as Chris's hips and over the hem of his coat, still trying to worm its way between the two men. "Did it lie to you, Chris? Tell you it had already won?" he asked, telling the story as the whispers in his head bade him to. "It's a petty trick, played only when one is truly at one's wits end trying to demoralize its opponent. It lied right before Buck reached you, didn't it." He kept his eyes on the creature, half-way mesmerized by its constantly changing face and form.

"Whatever you call yourself, demon, Buck is too stubborn to run from evil when it leaps out at the innocent or those he loves, and far too stupid to put his life above theirs. I assure you that his hold on Chris's soul is far firmer than yours could ever be." Ezra heard Buck's sigh, watched as the dark head dipped lower.

With the same stupidity to which he'd just credited Buck, he took one small step forward. Vin reached to grab his arm and jerk him back before his boot could touch the mire on the ground. The strong grip of a man unafraid of work bit hard into his flesh.

"The creature we're seeing," he said, feeling a wash of courage fill him and expand his lungs like a bellows, "craves and corrupts and feeds, but love by its very nature can never be possessed. Fear and ignorance are its only allies. The reason Jason lost his father, his dearest friend, his son-in-law and uncles is because he was afraid and ignorant about how weak his enemy was, how frail and formless. A mouse in front of a candle flame casts a large and ghastly shadow. Demon, you are no more than that, and I am no longer ignorant. "

He turned to look at Vin and pointedly tugged on his restrained arm. "Vin." He waited until Vin took his eyes off the writhing mass. "Let me go."

"Ezra—"

"I know what I'm doing," he said, and he was sure he sounded completely convincing.

He waited what seemed like forever for the bruising pressure on his arm to lessen even a little. "They're right there," he said reasonably. "They aren't going to die and we aren't going to leave without them. Let me go get them."

Vin looked up toward Chris and Buck, to Josiah and Nathan and JD, then shot him a tight, violent grin. "Come on, Ezra."

They moved together, one tiny step: Ezra's boots touched the blackness and he felt with crippling dissonance that the blackness also touched him.

First, Chris heard it, a sizzle and hiss like maggots in a fry pan, and he felt it next. His body seized, muscles going tight and rigid and tendons pulling taut until his palms pulled flat and his fingers curled in the air like a palsy was on him. The rest of his body did the same, and his head jerked hard enough to clonk against Buck's forehead, bringing a grunt from them both. He couldn't get his fingers to work, couldn't curl them back between Buck's where their fingers had laced together, couldn't clutch at Buck's arm. The creature's mottled curves and planes and dry, mucky colors swirled sickeningly before his eyes, its stench blew across his face and brought bile to the back of his throat. Just looking at it felt like a risk to his sanity, but it was better than when the thing had looked like Buck. Now, when he couldn't even hold Back, he hated the thing more than he had yet. Joints popped and his legs shook, something coursing through him like fire. He'd never felt a pain like this in his life, and didn't know if it was the kind of pain you survived.

"Buck?" he forced out.

"Still here." Buck sounded no better, but his grip on Chris stayed careful and firm while Chris's muscles twitched and jerked.

"Everybody hold still!" Vin's voice let Chris know that the others, at least, were getting themselves free. "Ez's got a story to finish."

Chris could almost feel his men now, not nearly like he and Buck were inside each other, but the phantoms of their thoughts waffled through the haze of his rage. JD's youthful fear clothed in dogged determination, Ezra's intelligence and submerged terror and courage; Nathan's outrage, Vin as mad as a hornet. Josiah—Josiah felt cool and calm, peaceful, and Chris realized that the man was praying. No prayers to ward off evil, but thanks to God that he had friends like these and a willingness to be brought up to judgment together if that was what was to happen. Negotiations for entry into heaven and simple faith that if Hell was what awaited them instead, they'd all go together.

Later, he'd never be able to say if he was more proud of 'em than he could say, or ready to shoot them himself.

His eyes still seemed stuck on the thing before him, and even though it no longer looked human, it looked plenty pissed. "Get off me," he growled at it. "You ain't gonna get us."

Buck swirled through him, determination as dogged as JD's and just as willful, and it was no wonder those two were friends, no wonder that JD swaggered more like Buck every day. Them two were a little bit alike in the ways that counted; both were the heroes of their own stories and sure that everything they did, no matter how ill-thought or unconsidered, was right and good. Idiots. He was in love with an idiot.

Buck's head actually shook against his shoulder; Buck had heard that, and was laughing.

Ezra himself felt positively free, and rummaged in his pockets for the samples he had collected from up above. "You want something from us? I'll gladly give you back what I took from this mine," he said, dropping it all to the ground. "I know you took Buck's form, because nothing else would have convinced Chris to dally down here. But you're getting nothing else from Buck, or from us." Ezra felt almost giddy with the power of certainty that rushed through him. The cave walls shook, dust and pebbles raining from the ceiling and off the walls.

Josiah let loose a tense chuckle. "No cave-ins, Ezra," he said.

A deep cracking sound boomed, the rending of stone from stone, and Ezra continued speaking as a man possessed, with no idea where his knowledge came from. "The men you have stolen away will reawaken to themselves and die their natural deaths or rejoin the living, and your hold on your victims will shatter like stone under blasting powder."

"Let 'em go!" JD shouted.

_Let them go,_ the voices in his mind repeated, a cacophony, and in the words of their innocent, Ezra saw the key. "Let them go," Ezra repeated, and looked to Vin, nodded.

"Let 'em go," Vin said, his voice low and tight and full of courage.

"Let 'em go!" Nathan shouted.

"Let them go," Josiah said peacefully.

"Let him go," Buck said from behind Chris.

That quickly, that simply, a percussive noise like an explosion rang in Ezra's ears and the room filled with a rain of dust and grit.

"I'm leavin' now," Chris Larabee said with familiar and much-beloved finality, and then he dropped to his knees like his strings had been cut.

"Move, Ezra!" Vin shouted—an order Ezra Standish had no trouble obeying as Buck and Vin hauled Chris up and Josiah and Nathan turned at a run for the mine entrance. The red light faded fast and soon they were jostling in the dark, hands brushing along jagged rock walls for balance. Somehow Chris got his feet back under him and Ezra found himself bringing up the rear with Josiah, who had lit his torch off the embers of Ezra's and held it out for Ezra now. The light from the torch cast long shadows that bore too much resemblance to the frightful images in his mind.

A terrible shrieking started up behind them, not animal and not human, not natural in any way. It grew louder and louder, as if the very earth cracking open behind them. "Hurry now, Ez," Josiah urged, and Ezra wondered if Josiah had looked behind, if he'd seen something… he hurried, removing his hand from the wall and running full pelt.

Josiah, huffing alongside him, chuckled suddenly. "Guess this'll make a good story," he said, and the laughter in his voice proved again that Ezra was the only sane person among their number.

JD had already grabbed Maverick for him, thank God, even tossed his saddle up. The rest of the men had shouldered their tack and abandoned most of their kits beside the fire. Ezra, listening to that sound echo up through the ground, couldn't blame them. Still, he retrieved his saddle blanket and grabbed up his coat from its place beside the fire, checking the pockets to be sure he hadn't slipped any other samples in there. He slowed enough as he approached the horses that he wouldn't start them shying and jumping. Once their view of the cave mouth was obscured by the downpour, they all paused long enough to throw blankets and saddles over their mounts and balance saddlebags over rumps or shoulders, then got the hell on into the storm.

They gave the horses their heads in the hope that the animals could pick their way blindly through the muck. Ezra had no idea where they were going or even how far they could get in this foul weather; he could barely see the light grey of Buck's horse's rump, just ahead. His clothes were soaked through already, and his hat brim bent dangerously before his eyes where a curtain of water poured from the felt to his hands on the reins, adding to the deluge already coming down.

They couldn't keep this up for long, but it wasn't like they had a choice—

"Whoa!" Buck shouted in alarm. Ezra barely reined in before Buck's usually staid horse jumped sideways and slid several feet, almost going down. He tightened his knees and urged his horse around, trying to keep out of the way of Buck's difficulties rather than add to them. Ezra realized then that more water poured from his hat brim than the actual sky, that the storm had slackened with the same unnatural speed it had begun.

He turned to look and saw where Steele's hooves had dug trenches in muddy earth. Just a few feet further back, the rain fell so heavily that it was hard to make out the deep hoof prints in the mud, the depressions already filled to overflowing. But the marks nearest the horse hadn't even properly begun to fill. He glanced around open-mouthed. "What the hell?"

"You said the storm belonged to that thing, Ezra," Josiah said.

Some short while later he found himself galloping full-pelt in the dark, knees and ankles dug in tight to Maverick's barrel, and he forced himself to tug hard at the reins. He recognized the river crossing, the water a shiny black ribbon, and knew Maverick would gallop right into it if Ezra didn't stop him.

"Whoa," he said, both to the horse and himself. Above him the sky was clear, the stars bright in an ink-black sky. Behind him lay the hills, and the storm that he could still hear and, presumably, his idiot friends who were too stupid to get out of the rain. He couldn't say why it was so important to him either, that he'd risked a full gallop at night over unknown land, but it was and as both he and his horse were whole, he didn't regret it.

Many minutes passed before the others caught up with him. Chris and Buck had slung their hats over their saddle horns while the rest of the men just dripped. Much to Ezra's relief, all of them kept casting covert glances over their shoulders to look at the storm and perhaps to make sure nothing was coming out of it. Six grown men, gunslingers all, creeping and quiet like church mice. If half of them weren't in shock and the other half scared out of their wits, and if Ezra hadn't had too much time alone to figure out that he was suffering from both simultaneously, he would taunt them unmercifully.

"I thought perhaps you'd all decided to stay," he said, trying to sound calm.

"Not there," Chris said, stopping a few feet from Ezra. "Here's better." He looked around, taking in the bend of the river and the wide-open road behind them, and kicked a heavy leg over his horse, sliding down like wet laundry. "Make camp, boys," he muttered.

"Are you insane?" Ezra snapped, angry for a moment that he had paused to wait for them. "What will we do if the storm moves this way or that creature comes after us?"

"We'll get wet," Chris said with a shrug, "or we'll ride on if we have to. But we're damned lucky nobody's broke a leg yet, and I'm—" Really, the man seemed far too calm given that he was the cause of all this, and Ezra couldn't say if it was equanimity or exhaustion. Already the others were moving to obey.

Ezra imagined he could still hear those inhuman shrieking and groaning noises that had echoed up out of the mine behind them, and he couldn't keep his hand from running over the butt of his Richards. "We need to get out of here."

"And go where?" Chris asked curtly.

"Anywhere!" Ezra practically yelled.

"Calm down, Ezra—" Nathan tried, but Ezra was having none of it.

"Why? Why on earth should I calm down?" Agitation built now and ate through the shock. "If there was ever in this life a time _not_ to be calm, I'd say it's now." The long-held survival trait of not showing his weaknesses bucked hard against what finally began to feel like pure, unmitigated terror. Even his horse was tossing its head and side-stepping nervously. He jerked at the reins, resentful that an animal to which he was so loyal was giving him away now. "That thing, whatever it is, is still back there and so is that freakish storm. There's no guarantee that either or both won't come _here_."

"There's no guarantee that thing ain't out in front of us in the dark either, Ezra!" Chris shot back, and the thought made Ezra shudder and go silent. He felt his fingers stroking his pistol butt and forcibly dropped his arm.

"Vin?" he asked, quieter now but hoping he'd find an ally there.

"Chris is right, Ezra," Vin said, just as quiet and a lot more somber. "Can't ford the river in the dark, and we got no idea what's ahead. It'd be pretty stupid to kill ourselves of our own fright, wouldn't it?"

"I'm not so sure I still won't," Ezra hazarded, and Vin huffed out a laugh.

"I think maybe we're clear of it," Vin said low. "Come on." Then he tugged on Peso's reins and led him off the roadside toward a grassy slope near the riverbank.

Vin _thought, maybe_… Ezra did _not_ feel better.

Ten minutes later Josiah had a fire going, far bigger than they needed but smaller than Ezra would have preferred. Bone-dry kindling crackled and snapped quickly, and Ezra wondered if their first fire still burned in the cave, still cast that comforting and completely mendacious glow from inside that deadly mouth. Horse's reins tied to a shrub for the moment, Ezra panted slightly and took measured steps along the edge of the road in his wet boots, staring aghast up at the cloudless sky. The waning moon hung low to the south, almost entirely obscured by the storm clouds that hovered over the hills.

He remembered his second whiskey bottle and retrieved it from his saddlebags, opening it and taking more than his fair share for a first shot but reasonably sure that the bottle would be empty when it made its way back to him.

"Gentlemen?" he asked, glad he could blame the spirits for the crack in his voice—he'd been aiming for casual civility. "Have we all lost our minds?"

"Wish I could say yeah, Ezra," Nathan said, low. "Think maybe I will anyhow."

"I sure feel like I've lost mine," JD volunteered. He held out his shaking hand hopefully for Ezra's bottle and Ezra, who again hadn't lifted a finger to prepare this new and ill-advised campsite, passed it over. JD turned it up like a seasoned drinker. "What was that thing, Ezra?" he asked after he'd swiped at his lips with his jacket sleeve. "How come we saw people, before it showed what it really was? How come it showed me _Buck?_"

"You saw Buck?" Ezra asked.

"Two of him, one in front of Chris and one behind, until the one in front of Chris... you mean you didn't?"

"No," Ezra said, "I didn't. I saw—"

"It ain't important what you saw, Ezra," Josiah cut in, and shot a quelling look at them all, "and this ain't the time to be talkin' about it. I reckon we're all fearful enough already."

Chris looked around at his men, wondering if Josiah wasn't right. He didn't need to be any great reader of people to know everybody was shit-scared and rightly so. Hell, maybe they were even more scared out here away from that thing, with time to think and nowhere to hide. Chris reckoned he must be scared himself, though most times he couldn't tell it from the inside. Still. "Pass that bottle, JD," he said, and held his hand out.

Buck intercepted it first and took two good slugs. Chris couldn't resent it; Buck had walked up to that thing with his eyes wide open, and realized in that moment just how much they both had to lose. Chris took a few steps to close the space between them and took the bottle himself, tipping it back enough to wet his throat and no more.

"Vin?" he asked, holding up the bottle.

"Nah, Chris," Vin said. Josiah ambled over and relieved him of it, which freed him to dig out the little box that held his cigarillos. His hand trembled when he struck the match, making the flame dance in the still air. So he was shaken up too. He sucked in a deep, unsteady drag, felt the smoke burn going in and give substance to that space in his chest where breath usually went. The burn of the whiskey in his gullet and the powder of smoke in his lungs helped him redefine where his body was, helped him track down that fear so he could know it and control it, not let it get away from him. He was no good to anybody if he did that.

Echoes of that thing still tugged at him, and he couldn't shake it. He let out his breath slowly, watching the long cloud that looked white in the light of the fire.

Buck hadn't sidled up to him this time, oh no. This time Chris had closed the distance, so he was almost shoulder to shoulder with the man. But Buck's hand on him still made him stiffen a little and he tucked his chin, watched Buck's hand slide down his arm to his wrist to his fingertips to steal the cigarillo.

"You okay?" he asked, looking up into Buck's shadowed face.

Buck nodded "yes," said, "Nope," and grinned tightly.

Chris watched the cherry-red glow deepen as Buck drew in a tiny draught at first and held it in his mouth before pulling it on down into his lungs. If Buck wasn't careful he'd end up coughing like a schoolboy, because his smoking more than the occasional cigar was a recent development. Buck always claimed it was self-defense, right before grinding out Chris's cigarillos and turning Chris's mouth up for a wet, wide-open, smoky kiss.

"You ain't gonna need that," he said, a grin slipping up from somewhere inside him. He couldn't believe Buck would even think otherwise.

"You never know." Buck's teeth flashed white before his lips pursed around the butt.

"I do know," Chris said, and turned back to the fire and his friends, waiting for Buck to choke down two or three drags and hand his smoke back to him. He felt the heat of the coal near his cheek, smelled the soft sweet exhale of smoke a moment later. Buck was standing too close but Chris didn't push him away, not even with JD staring at them.

"Well you're wrong then, pard, because in just a minute I'm gonna—"

"Buck!" he didn't really get the word out in time to stop the man's damnably shameless prattle.

"Not like they don't know," Buck whispered quietly enough, and as close to Chris's ear as his mouth was no one else could hear, not the words and not the soft pleasure that honeyed the man's voice. "Ezra's done seen to that."

He tucked his chin a little and tilted his head back. "I like to think JD didn't figure it out," he breathed.

A low chuckle ruffled his hair. "Sorry Chris, but he ain't that green anymore."

Buck was still far too close to him. Chris still didn't step away. "We're ain't giving them a demonstration."

"Don't make promises you won't keep," Buck said, the rough passion in his voice not even slightly mistakable for the more familiar passions they shared in private. Buck was still scared of what had happened just like the rest of them were, but Chris knew Buck was deeply moved by what he'd learned too. It almost made him want Buck to test him, to take that threatened kiss just because Buck wanted it.

He didn't shiver when Buck's fingers trailed firmly back down his arm and over the back of his hand to push the cigarillo in between his fingers, but something in him loosened, that shaken-up part beginning the slow process of settling. Buck was probably right. After what Buck had done, after what they'd both admitted to better than words they'd never speak, could ever say… no, he probably wouldn't refuse the reassurances Buck sought, but he wouldn't welcome such things either. That alone might make Buck restrain himself. He sucked in a drag of smoke and pressed his shoulder back, every part of him aware how close Buck stood even before his shoulder made contact with Buck's chest.

"Done made my promises, Buck," he whispered. "Guess you know that now."

Buck tilted his head down a little; Chris felt beard shadow and mustache catch in the fine hairs behind his ear, felt the gentle pull and tangle. Damn it. Buck sure as hell wasn't doing this to show off to anybody, but the effect was the same as if Buck had tried for the kiss he'd hinted at. JD kept staring, and Chris frowned. There was no way JD would just accept what he'd learned, and Chris didn't want to see the hurt in Buck's eyes if JD turned on them. He had to admit, he worried about how all the boys but Ezra would take the truth now that they had more time to think about it. Ezra'd obviously already had his time and made his decision.

Lightning struck near enough to throw a brilliant wash of light over them all, to make JD and Ezra jump and all the horses stamp their feet, to display his men as clear to him as if they were standing on the street in the middle of the afternoon. It made him just as visible to all of them, and Buck too, with his nose practically pressed into Chris's hair and Chris letting him. The thunder that chased the light sounded distant and quiet, like it reached across a wide valley from a storm that was miles away. Every one of the boys stared at them now and he tried to see their eyes in the shadows, keeping his right hand free and easy and near his gun. He wouldn't kill any of his friends, but he wouldn't let them come after Buck either. Or him.

Vin edged around JD and walked slowly toward him. Chris couldn't help stiffening a little, edging an inch further between Buck and the others. Vin's eyes scanned down their bodies all the way to the ground and back.

"Vin?" Buck said. It wasn't a friendly voice.

"You've got that shit all over you," Vin grated. His voice wasn't friendly either.

He felt Buck ease out from behind him, and then it was Buck examining him too. "Shit," Buck cursed. Buck reached and grabbed Chris by his hips and Chris jerked a step back, breaking the hold.

"Buck!"

But Buck stared down at his own hands, turning them toward the firelight. They were covered in something, it looked shiny and dark like tar, and a second later Chris was jerking off his own coat and tossing it away. He stared at it on the ground, oilier and shinier than oilskin itself could ever be, and sucked hard on his cigarillo, relying on the smoke to fill in the shaky parts of him and wishing for more of Ezra's whiskey.

Buck untied his bandana and started wiping Chris off: skin mainly, firm and gentle strokes around the back of Chris's neck and down under the top of his shirt collar, then Chris's hands, careful and gentle like a parent might clean chocolate off his child. Buck dropped to his knees to start on Chris's boots.

It seemed like every touch of that bandana had lightened the clutch of recent memory, like the shit on him was still a living part of that thing…. Chris kept himself from shaking by will alone, looking around wildly for the whiskey bottle. Ezra was right there, holding it out to him. "There's plenty," Ezra lied.

Chris accepted the bottle and the lie and took a mouthful, then another. He didn't say a word, just dropped his gaze to the top of Buck's head, to the sharp line of Buck's tight jaw, to the faded red of Buck's bandana as it turned stained and dark even in the dim light. Buck rubbed it hard and fast over his boots, and Chris turned his head toward the others. "All of you, get this shit off you."

"We ain't got it on us," JD said. He patted at his trouser leg and a little cloud of gray dust like plain old dirt puffed up. "It's just you two."

When Buck finished, he tossed his bandana into the fire. They all jumped back as the fire spewed up sparks and bright flame. All but Chris, who just stared at the blaze while its heat threatened to singe him.

"Get your pants off," Buck growled, and damned if Buck didn't start to try and manhandle him out of his britches when he didn't move quick enough. He tugged away from Buck's grasp and set to it, working the heavy buckle of his gun belt and gently lowering it to the ground. Toeing off his boots, he eeled out of his trousers and stared first at the fire, then at the river.

"Might ought to burn 'em, Chris," Nathan said. He was unnaturally quiet, but for now Chris blamed it on events.

"I'd have to agree, Chris," Josiah said. "Them pants at least. Maybe everything. You c'n scrub your boots in the river when day breaks."

"Hell with it," he muttered, and tossed his trousers onto the fire. "You too, Buck," he ordered, ignoring the heat that flared up, and dropped to his knees on the cool grass to tug on Buck's boots, then set to cleaning them as carefully as Buck had done his own while the others looked on in silence. He wished Ezra would talk—hell, he'd have welcomed JD's nervous chatter right about now, because the eerie silence grated on him. He rose up when Buck's boots looked fairly well polished, sparing barely a glance for his partner's bare legs.

JD sidled off toward the horses and came back a minute later, holding out clothes. "I grabbed 'em out of your saddle bags," he explained uselessly. Chris just nodded and pulled on his dirty pair of trousers while Buck did the same, but they both stood there in stocking feet, each as unwilling as the other to put their boots back on before they'd dunked them in the river.

The terrible fatigue had faded now that the remains of that thing were off him, leaving behind the bone-weariness he often felt after too much fighting. He'd have a bath in the river before they bedded down, make sure Buck did too.

"I owe you a new coat," Buck said, flat.

"Ezra owes me a new coat too, now that ya mention it," Vin said.

"Someone owes me several years of my life!" Ezra sniped back.

"I ain't the one did all that talking back there." Vin's teeth flashed in the firelight. "Damn, but you tell a good ghost story, Ezra!"

"Don't even joke about it!"

"He's not jokin'," Chris said. "Whatever the hell that was back there, it must've got to you at least a little bit, maybe through the man who told you the story…" maybe through Chris himself. "Who knows how many others?"

"It didn't get to us," Vin said easily. "It's squawking and screaming and dying right now." He laughed low. "I bet it's sure as hell pissed off."

Chris wished for a hell of a lot more whiskey than Ezra could possibly be carrying, and picked up the bottle for one more drink. He shook the bottle, finished the last swallow and handed the empty back to Ezra. "Ezra? What really happened down there? You all were talking about Ezra's story. Buck said it happened practically word for word." Ezra paled, enough that even in the firelight Chris could tell.

"Actually, that's not exactly true." Chris heard the quaver in his voice and waited for answers. "When we were down in the mine, I heard… I have no idea who I heard, or _what_. Did no one else hear voices down there?"

Chris hadn't, and the others shook their heads.

Ezra swallowed loudly. "I… something whispered inside my head. A voice, or voices… I just knew exactly what to say, knew what had happened before we arrived…."

Josiah raised a hand and grabbed Ezra by the elbow. "I'm gonna say it one more time. We don't really know what powers are behind this thing and oughtn't to start talking about it now. You want to conjure it up again?"

Chris wanted to tear into that hole and kill it… but maybe Ezra already had.

Buck felt the sudden easing of tension in Chris's arms and thanked his lucky stars. They were alive and he planned to stay that way at least until daybreak. November first. Maybe Halloween night was cursed after all.

"That's it," Buck said firmly. "No more ghost stories tonight."

Chris tried to draw away then, but Buck was in no mood to let that happen. He caught Chris's hand and tugged, not too hard, not forcing anything, just holding on like he always had and letting Chris make his decisions for himself. He had a lot more confidence after tonight which way that decision was going to go, though.

"Buck…"

Buck turned so he could look Chris in the eye and stared into those eyes he knew could be so pale but now looked inky black in the night. "Yeah?"

He could guess what Chris thought as Chris glanced around at the others under the unsteady light from the fire. Buck couldn't read them but that didn't mean Chris couldn't; he looked around himself, wondering what Chris saw—wondering what the boys felt and thinking maybe he shouldn't be holding Chris's hand. Then he thought that maybe he ought to be a little bit pissed off at Ezra.

"How'd you know, Ezra?" he asked, waiting out Chris's silent examination of each of them.

Ezra's voice floated soft and low. "From my very earliest years, Buck, my mother educated me to find a person's tells and exploit his weaknesses. In my years with all of you, I learned that exploitation wasn't actually a necessary a part of that equation. Take comfort in the fact that I've known for some time, and that I never would have mentioned it if I wasn't led to believe it might save all of our lives."

Buck chewed on that for a second and then nodded, satisfied. "I do, Ezra. Thank you. Vin?"

Vin just shrugged. "Don't make no difference to me."

To Buck's eyes, everybody else but JD seemed guarded, while JD's face openly screamed just how uncomfortable he was. Buck had trouble reasoning it was because he and Chris were standing too close, not after all they'd been through for however long that strangeness had lasted down in the mine. Still, you never knew.

"Quit it," Chris said, low.

"Quit what?"

"Whatever you're thinkin'," Chris said, surly. He tugged on his trapped hand hard enough to break Buck's grip and took a step toward the fire.

Buck couldn't read Chris's mind anymore, and already he missed it. It didn't escape him that the other boys were keeping quiet now, and Buck knew that would change soon enough. Knew that it _should_ change, because by God he wanted to be sure he could count on them, and he needed to understand what had happened tonight, why Chris had been the center of it and if he ever would be again.

"I'm right here, Buck. Whatever that was, whatever happened down there or didn't," he said, and wasn't it just like Chris to leave room for the possibility that nothing had happened at all just because the stubborn bastard couldn't explain it? Chris had to leave room for the possibility of a nightmare, intoxication, poisoning from the dinner they'd all shared or some noxious gas that seeped up from the cave, "it's over, and I'm still right here."

What would keep it from happening again? Buck couldn't help but think it wasn't really over. "Chris…"

Chris reached a hand back and caught Buck's wrist, his fingers pressing hard against the throb of Buck's blood for a second before they relaxed and trailed down a little, threaded with Buck's own. He looked embarrassed, but he held on tight.

They were holding hands. Right here in front of the boys, they were holding hands.

He'd figured that Chris was unwilling, maybe even unable to do something like this, to offer this with witnesses present. It didn't surprise him to be wrong. His heart swelled up and all he wanted to do was shelter Chris, and love him for as long as he had breath.

_I'm right here._ He wanted Chris to say it again, but Chris was a man who didn't like using words when he didn't have to. Buck ground his teeth together and tried to pull his hand away from Chris's.

"Get a hold of yourself," Chris said, so quietly that none of the others could possibly hear.

This thing, it was just between the two of them and nobody else's business. Still, as Chris's fingers rubbed across the back of his hand, he felt a lightening in his chest that maybe they wouldn't have to sneak around all the time, that maybe he could just say, "I'm going out to Chris's" and not find excuses for JD or Vin to stay in town. Chris was still Chris though, a very private man who didn't like others messing in his business no matter how well meaning. Maybe that would change in time, and maybe it wouldn't. Chris held his private nature dearly, and they rarely even touched outside the safety of Buck's boarding house room or Chris's own home.

He wanted to get back to his boarding house right now, or Chris's place or hell, anywhere they could have a minute to themselves. "We got a long night ahead of us," he muttered, looking back toward the storm.

"It ain't coming back," Chris said firmly. "I know it." His tone made the words a lie.

Still, Chris had held his hand, and Buck took great comfort from that touch.

The rain back in the hills looked to be easing off a little. The storm clouds seemed smaller, too. So far, nothing had happened out here. Nothing was going to, he decided. "I need to see to my horse," he said after a minute, and tugged gently on Chris's hand.

"I ought to get Pony up," Chris said back, "fetch my bedroll," and there was nothing telling in his voice but Buck was glad, so damned glad he'd shared that cigarillo. Because a minute later they were far enough from the firelight and behind their horses and holding each other as tight as they had down in that mine, and Buck's tongue was in Chris's mouth and Chris's tongue was in his, and it was as violent and desperate as it ever had been in their youths and it went on forever, much to Buck's satisfaction.

Buck pulled back finally, trying to make out Chris's face in the shadows. "I really do love you," he said, wanting to say it.

"Yeah," Chris said softly, and pulled his head back down. This kiss was softer, not desperate like the first when it had hit Buck that he might never have been able to kiss Chris again, never hold him like this. This kiss said all the words Chris wouldn't.

"What the—"

They jerked away at the shocked squeak of JD's voice and Buck couldn't hold back a chuckle at how big and round his eyes are.

He heard Ezra grumbling before the man actually got to them: "And _why_ did you let him wander this way?" Ezra was saying, apparently to one or all of the guys. "Do you _want_ the boy to keel over dead?"

When Ezra made his way around Pony's rump he didn't even look at Buck or Chris. He just reached out and grabbed JD by collar. "Get over here, JD," he hissed.

"I was just gonna get my bedroll!" JD squealed, but Ezra cut him off.

"Not a word!"

Buck looked at Chris while Ezra dragged a struggling JD away. When he heard the haughty, "Amateurs, I'm surrounded by amateurs," he started laughing; he couldn't help it.

"He'll make a good momma someday, won't he?" Buck chortled. He sure as hell made a good friend.

Chris reached a hand up to Buck's shoulder and left it there for a moment, only letting him go so Buck could loosen the cinch on Don Juan's saddle and give the big grey a quick rubdown with his hands. Chris retrieved his spare underwear while Buck watched him and thought up some real good reasons that he and Chris ought to slink down to the water's edge and clean up together. Alone. Chris frowned over at him like he knew exactly what Buck was thinking.

Chris didn't say anything though, just herded him back toward the fire. Everyone else was grinning when they got back, except for JD who fumed silently behind Josiah. It looked like JD embarrassed was more entertaining than anything else the guys could think of, and maybe they'd settled down some about him and Chris. He'd still pull 'em all aside to talk to 'em, maybe ask Chris to check up on JD in case JD didn't want to talk to him personally just yet, but it looked like they were all right for now.

Chris dropped his bedroll beside Buck's with a quick, nervous glance around at their friends that touched Buck immeasurably. Chris wasn't going to be giving anybody a show, but Buck knew Chris wanted him arm's reach tonight. He imagined Chris's hand, slipping out from under his covers, a fingertip just barely touching some part of him, reassuring him that Buck was there.

"You ought to go on down to the river," Buck said, utterly transparent and not caring at all, "make sure you get that crud off you." He didn't get to a count of three in his head before he added, "Maybe I ought to, too."

Ezra rolled his eyes. Vin snorted. Josiah and Nathan barely reacted at all, and JD's mouth dropped open fly-catching wide but he didn't say anything.

Back behind them, the storm was definitely fading. It looked like the clouds were shrinking away, and the fat moon peeked out further and brighter from behind it.

It looked like they'd survive the night.

-the end-  
A Mag 7, Chris/Buck, Chris-Buck fic and discussion group because, "There's more to life than drinkin' and fightin'."

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